Compelling Photographic Glitch Art by Sabato Visconti

Project Name

Compelling Photographic Glitch Art

Posted in

Artist

Detailed Information
Project Name	Compelling Photographic Glitch Art	Posted in	Photography	Artist	Sabato Visconti

Sometimes great ideas come about as a result of accidents and mistakes, as in the case of photographer and glitch artist Sabato Visconti, who got the idea for glitching images after discovering some corrupt photos in a friend’s malfunctioning flash memory card. After several years and innumerable experiments, Visconti has now become a true master of his unusual art, using his own source images to create kaleidoscopic and imaginative digital paintings. The principle in all these works is the same: by treating image files in unorthodox ways, you get unusual, and often beautiful results. To achieve this, Visconti has experimented with several methods, including glitching images as if they were 3D objects (in the ‘City of Vapors’ and ‘Little Monsters’ series), using pixel-sorting algorithms (for the ‘Images Adrift’ series), and even treating images as if they were audio (for ‘The Inner Resonance of Things’ series).

Sabato Visconti, from the series 'The Inner Resonance of Things'. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, from the series 'City of Vapors'. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, Ways to See a Van Gogh. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, from the series 'Studies in New and Obscure File Formats'. Courtesy of the artist.

According to Visconti, the entire glitching process is more of a philosophy than an aesthetic, since it’s all about ‘‘artists developing their own forms of production with whatever unorthodox tools they have in hand’’ — an approach that certainly shares an ethos with other marginal art practices such as street art. Ironically, the dirty and saturated style of much glitch- and street-art comes about from how artists relate to the public space: ‘‘Graffiti culture grew in opposition to the saturation of advertisements in public spaces,’’ claims Visconti, ‘‘much like glitch art has grown in opposition to the saturation of digital media in our everyday lives.’’ It therefore comes as no surprise that Visconti has used street photography as the prime matter for his ‘City of Vapors’ series, a body of work that is also a tribute to Miami, the city where the artist grew up. For more images and available art prints, you can visit Sabato Visconti’s website.

Sabato Visconti, Flavor King, from the series 'Images Adrift'. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, from the series 'Little Monsters. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, Subdivision, from the series 'Synthetic Autumn'. Courtesy of the artist.

Sabato Visconti, The Great Highway, from the series 'Images Adrift'. Courtesy of the artist.